Boy, some of the things you’re scared of trying aren’t scary because you shouldn’t be doing them, actually they’re scary because you love them so much and don’t want to fail. But if you don’t even try you’ve already failed!

A friend of mine recently told me that he wished that his daughters don’t go to school. He offered his oldest the very prestigious award that said: “Do precisely what I recommend you do for a year and don’t go to college”. Well, he wasn’t sure she was going to take it. He basically wanted to change her college habits into the following “ideal college program”:

I started writing this post from Valence, a southeastern French city where I've been invited by friends to spend the Easter weekend. I got back to Paris last night and had to finish it before publishing it today.

Like at any traditional French family mealtime, a few topics emerged going from food recipes, to world’s current affairs via the upcoming French presidential elections.

At Expats Paris, we don’t talk at about current issues, we don’t either write about French political issues.

While discussing with my friends (during this Easter five hours meal), I had a thought about an almost-similar conversation topic I had a few weeks ago with Christian and Tony on WhatsApp. Our conversation brought up concerns over the way French people should vote for. We basically expressed our worries about a candidate that may lead the country to a Frexit and lock it up to itself, throwing away all the cultural and economic benefits it’s been enjoying from its Foreign Policy and immigration, in particular.

Tokyo, Japan: one of the world’s most populous city with about 35 million residents.

Delhi, Paris, London, Los Angeles, Rome, Cairo, Luanda…

The world population is increasing every second.

By 2025, the world population will be over 8 billion people.

Around 2040 it could hit 9 billion and by 2100, it could reach a massive number of 11 billion people.

Even as I’m writing this post, we’re already 7 billion and counting.

Basically, the world’s population today is about 200,000 people larger than yesterday.

Every year we extract 55 billion tons of biomass, fossil energy, metal, and minerals from the earth. This is almost 10 tons for every person in the world. And for some of us over here in the western world, this number is much higher.

Every year we dump a massive 2.12 billion tons of waste. Basically, If all this waste was put on trucks they would go around the world 24 times.

The reason we’re putting this list together is that, when you’re desperately looking for a job and get contacted back for one, it’s so easy to forget what an interview’s all about (especially in a French company). It sure feels like it’s about you, but I’ve come to realize that it’s really not.

A job interview is basically all about how you (especially if you’re an expat) can help your future employer succeed. It’s actually all about finding out what this potential future boss requires then matching up your background and rich experience with what he/she really needs.

And you know what? It’s actually very easy to overlook these job interview facts. Like in any other company in your country of origin, there’s so much else going on in your future work in France, your life, and in your job hunt, that you can easily forget to look at the interview from your French interviewer’s point de vue.

I tend to think that’s seriously shameful because the objective here is to make sure that your interviewer walks away from the interview very impressed.

When I moved to Paris, seven years ago, I was ready to embark on a remarkable adventure, which I knew would be engraved in my heart probably for the rest of my life.

It was an exciting feeling to arrive in Paris and see the city of light – a modern city with an amazing history. I will never forget when I first took the metro. It was like a completely new world. It was indeed loved at first sight. I knew I loved this city and I’d love to live here for an extensive amount of time.

It was dark in the evening, the Christmas bulbs gave the whole city its lights. It was shining so bright, almost like daytime. The streets were very busy, with different people shopping from one shop to another. I was enthrall seeing The Palais Garnier, which is the Paris Opera House, and so many other remarkable landmarks.

So many things around me were pretty new. New Metro stations, new currency, New language (well, I spoke a little French then, but still Parisians have their own expressions than I had to learn), no friends around, new cuisine, new, new, new…

With busy lives in Paris (like many other huge cities), it can be way-too-hard to get time to volunteer. That said, the benefits of volunteering are actually enormous to everyone and most especially to an expatriate, their family, and the new community they’ve moved to.

Here are the main innovations that have been introduced in Paris and entire France on January 1, 2017, such as, for example, caregiving leave, no-fault divorce, air quality certificate, or the end of plastic bags in the Parisian food markets.